Beware of assessing prerequisite knowledge in your retrieval Do Now

It can lead to lots of problems

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Introduction

I am obsessed with the start of lessons. Get the start of the lesson right, and it sets your students up for a productive learning experience. Get it wrong, and you are playing catch-up all lesson.

Long-time readers may recall this post, where I describe my work with colleagues to develop a departmental approach to the Do Now, looking at content and pedagogy. Here, I would like to make further observations about the content.

Most Do Nows are focussed on retrieval – and given all we know about the importance of providing regular retrieval opportunities to our students, that is a good idea.

There are two types of knowledge we could ask students to retrieve during the Do Now:

1.     Knowledge unrelated to that lesson

2.     Knowledge related to that lesson – in other words, prerequisite knowledge

Of course, there is a third option: include questions to assess both types of knowledge in the Do Now.

Before I waffle on, what is your view? What type of knowledge do you assess in your Do Now?

The problem with mixed Do Nows

Having watched more Do Nows over the last few years than I ever thought I would, I have concluded that options 2 and 3 do not work. In other words, if you include questions to assess prerequisite knowledge in your Do Now, you are asking for trouble.

To examine why, let’s take a Do Now from a recent school visit:

The lesson focused on solving quadratic equations using factorisation. Hence, Question 2 was included in the Do Now to assess this important prerequisite knowledge. The other three questions were unrelated to the rest of the lesson and were there to strengthen students' memory of that knowledge and reduce the chances of them forgetting how to do it.

What happened next highlighted my concerns about including prerequisite knowledge during the Do Now.

1. The Do Now took a lot longer than the teacher intended

Many teachers and departments like to have their Do Now boxed off in around 10 minutes. This is only possible if you can move on from a question if students are still struggling. Such a move is only possible if the question has nothing to do with the rest of the lesson, as you know you can return to it at a later date. It is not possible to do so if the question assesses prerequisite knowledge.

In this lesson, many students had forgotten how to factorise quadratic equations. So, the teacher explained and rechecked for understanding. But her students still struggled. So, she explained again – as she had to because, without that knowledge, the rest of the lesson would have been a write-off. But, of course, the minutes were ticking. 18 minutes into a 10-minute Do Now, the teacher decided to wrap things up and move on before she had the chance to assess students’ understanding of Question 4.

2. Some students collaborated during the Do Now

Even though the Do Now was conducted in silence, and the teacher reinforced the importance of independent work, it is all too easy to catch a glimpse of your partner’s answer to a question when you are working for more than 5 minutes. And, having seen that answer, it is all too easy to change your answer, convincing yourself you knew it all along. This, of course, reduces the reliability of the subsequent check for understanding. With questions unrelated to the rest of the lesson, this is not ideal, but it is not a disaster. With questions designed to assess prerequisite knowledge, it could be a disaster as you are building new knowledge on shaky foundations.

Hence, in this lesson, you had students swapping signs and numbers for Question 2 and then displaying the correct answer to the teacher, who was unaware of this sleight of hand.

3. You probably want more than one question to assess prerequisite knowledge

Most new concepts need to be built upon the solid foundations of several existing concepts. Hence, to assess the strength of these foundations, you usually require several questions.

In this Do Now, we have one question dedicated to prerequisite knowledge. What about a question assessing students ability to rearrange equations, or to substitute, or to multiply by zero, or to find the additive inverse? These were left untested because of the desire to include unrelated retrieval questions in the Do Now. The price was paid later when students’ lack of knowledge came back to bite them as they grappled with the new procedure that relied upon that knowledge.

4. It’s much harder to establish and automate a routine

I am a huge fan of routines, for both teachers and students. And especially at the start of lessons. But mixed Do Nows like the one above make routines so much harder to establish and automate. To see what I mean, imagine explaining the following to teachers and students…

So, we answer our Do Now questions in our books, and then when instructed, we show the answer to Question 1 on our mini-whiteboards. If more than 80% of you are correct, I will confirm the answer and move on to the next question. If fewer than 80% of you have answered the question correctly, I will explain how to do it and re-check your understanding with a follow-up question. And if you are still struggling after that, I will make a note and return to that topic at a later date.

(So far so good… but wait…)

Oh, except if the question is assessing prerequisite knowledge, in which case I cannot move on. In that case, I will try to explain it again and keep rechecking your understanding until you have gotten it.

So now, when delivering the Do Now, amidst the millions of other things vying for their attention, teachers must also consider what type of knowledge each question is assessing and adjust their responses accordingly. Likewise, we find ourselves explaining to students that even though we moved on from Question 1 when they were still struggling, we will not move on from Question 2 as they need that knowledge for the rest of the lesson. All of this adds unnecessary confusion, which slows down the development of a routine.

So, what is the solution?

Let’s start with what it is not: making the content of the Do Now purely prerequisite knowledge. Doing this means you:

1. no longer have a set structure to your Do Now - it’s very unlikely that the same number of prerequisite questions will be optimum for each concept

2. immediately have less control over the time to Do Now takes - it could take 30 seconds, it could take 15 minutes

3. risk failing to revisit, and hence strengthen the memory of, concepts that are not prerequisites for others - what is density prerequisite for?

No, I favour a four-question Do Now, where each question is designed to strengthen the memory of content unrelated to the rest of the lesson, delivered something like this.

However, following that, I like a section of the lesson dedicated to assessing prerequisite knowledge. This works best one question at a time to reduce instances of copying and keep up a hearty pace, eliciting mass participation by either asking students to respond on mini-whiteboards or by using multiple-choice diagnostic questions and ABCD cards. Tell the students what this phase of the lesson is and why you are doing it. Be prepared for it to take 30 seconds or 15 minutes, depending on what your students know and don’t know.

Doing so should avoid the issues described above and ensure students are as prepared as possible to learn some lovely new knowledge.

How does this lesson structure compare to yours?

What do you agree with, and what have I missed?

Let me know in the comments below!

🏃🏻‍♂️ Before you go, have you…🏃🏻‍♂️

1. … checked out our incredible, brand-new, free resources from Eedi?

2. … read my latest Tips for Teachers newsletter about doing the register?

3. … … listened to my latest podcast with Ollie Lovell about a recent lesson he taught?

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5. … read my Tips for Teachers book?

Thanks so much for reading and have a great week!

Craig